[This interview was published in my magazine
that I coedited with etta cetera, "Street RatBag" issue 4. The
interviewee was arrested on his way to a protest against a chemical warfare
mock attack in downtown Pittsburgh. He was interrogated & both his apartment
& his father's home were searched without a warrant. - August 23, 2014
note from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE]

Editor's note: The "Local and State News" item above
is reproduced because it's a blip on the activist radar screen indicating
a chemical-warfare-simulation-to-be. This latter lead to a local group creating
a street theater piece intended to counter the powers-that-be propaganda.
Dave, the person interviewed below, had intended to be part of this street
theater. He tells about what happened to him & how NO ILLEGAL ACTIVITY
ON HIS PART LEAD TO A SEARCHING BY THE FBI & THE POLICE OF BOTH HIS
HOME & THAT OF HIS FATHER. To make matters worse, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
then ran the "Downtown drill invites real-life drama" as an apparent
gloss-over of the, to me at least, obvious Police State intrusiveness into
Dave's life. In case it isn't already obvious to EVERYBODY yet (or, at least,
to Street RatBag readers), we're in a time when all any 'authority' figure
has to do is cry "Terrorist" & they can procede to do whatever
the fuck they want to. Forget search warrants, forget any laws that've ever
been designed to protect citizens from totalitarian control freak zombies,
once the cry of "Terrorist" is out of their mouths you can kiss
any legal protection to yourself goodbye. Be forewarned.

How to become a TERRORIST
without really trying

Dave: Alright, so, Once Upon A Time we saw an article in the paper
about a chemical warfare drill downtown & we thought this was messed
up because we don't think that the government should be involved in any
sort of warfare activitities & particularly not in downtown Pittsburgh
- So, we planned some street theater, to go down there, we had a whole play
worked out about the history of, about United States chemical warfare activites
- starting back, going all the way back to, you know, giving smallpox blankets
to the Indians - &, so, on the day that it was supposed to take place,
this was a Saturday, we were gonna meet downtown - &, so I went downtown
alone - & I had a gas-mask for the street theater in a plastic Giant
Eagle bag - &, so, I walked up to where it was supposed to be &
the place that we were gonna meet was all cordoned off, so, I thought "Ok,
they must be a block away", so I walked up a block away in the wrong
direction & was stopped by an officer who said, you know, "Who
are you? What're you doin' here? Where're you going? Where're you coming
from?" & I said, um, "Dave Romberger & I'm comin' from
home & I just wanna watch" - ahh, I didn't want to get into any
protest things because I wasn't sure how legal it would be - so they said
"Alright, well you'll get a good view of it right across the street
over there" so I said "Ok, thanks." So, I started walking
across the street & a 2nd officer came up to me & said, "Excuse
me. Could you please drop the bag & put your hands on hood of the car."
So, I was like, "Oh shit!" but I did it.

RATical: This was just a random car or your car that you were
at?

Dave: No, it was a random car - it just happened to be parked
there. Anyway, so, they patted me down & pulled all this, like, everything
out of my pockets & then they cuffed me & started asking me questions
on the street for about a half an hour, refused my request for water for
most of that time - at one point, about the 1st time I asked for water,
I had a water bottle on me too, &, you know, they got really alarmed
& asked "Do you want water from your water bottle" & I
was, like, "I don't care - Just give me some water" - so, finally
they gave me some water & they took me down to the Public Safety building
& put me up in an office there somewhere - they took the cuffs off for
that, which was kinda nice - & questioned me for about 2 hours more
there &, while they were questioning me, they had a police scanner goin'
& I was sorta half listenin' to that & apparen-, like, one of the
questions they'd asked me on the street was "How'd ya get down here?"
& then "Where's your car?" - so I told 'em & then on the
police scanner, about the 1st thing that, you know, when I really started
listening to it was when they said "We found a bomb" - I'm like,
"Oh shit!! What did they plant in my car?!", you know?, so, they
said "It appears to be a stick of dynamite wrapped in cellophane"
& it took 'em probably a good 45 minutes to figure out that the "dynamite"
was actually a road flare. In the meantime, they kept on searchin' the car
& found a buncha "suspicious wires" & some "suspicious
liquids" in the trunk, but, these would've been a car DiscMan kit &
bottles of water - you know, stuff that you're normally supposed to keep
in the car - but, in any case, so - after about 3 hours, total, they said,
"Well, we'd like to charge you with terroristic threats, but, we really
can't because you didn't do anything, so, we have to let you go now."
So they drove me down to my car & it was like, completely trashed -
they'd tossed the whole thing - & so I drove home to my apartment &
walked in & there were 4 city cops & an FBI agent searching my apartment
so I said, "Hi. Can I see a warrant?" & they said "We
don't have one - your roommate let us in." So, I was just like, "Alright"..

RATical: Hold on for just a minute - just to backtrack - obviously
they found the gas-mask that you were carrying in your bag & they used
the gas-mask bag as the justification for asking you to drop the bag &
to hand-cuff you etc, etc

Dave: Right.

RATical: In other words, the finding or the noticing of the gas-mask
was what basically set off the whole thing. When they were interrogating
you they presumably asked you about why you had the gas-mask & what
did you tell them?

Dave: I said that, uh, you know, I had heard that they were gonna
- this was complete bullshit - I just didn't wanna get into any protest
shit 'cause, uh, like, they were pretty interested in that sorta thing.
I just told 'em that I'd heard they'd be using teargas or whatever &
I didn't wanna get a shot of that if the wind changed or whatever - I
should also mention that they questioned me pretty heavily about whether
I'd been involved in the Philadelphia protests earlier that summer,
whether I'd had any far-right or left-wing affiliations - if I was a nazi
- all sorts of stuff, anyways..

RATical: Did they keep the gas-mask? Did they tell you that it
was illegal to have a gas-mask?

Dave: No, they gave the gas-mask back. They did, actually they
did say it was illegal for a while during the interrogation but I kinda
knew that it wasn't so I convinced them to give it back to me [laughs]..

RATical: So, back at your apartment then..

Dave: Yeah.

RATical: You've come into your apartment & unbeknownst to
you they've decided to search the place - there's 4 city cops there &
an FBI agent & you start talking with them.

Dave: Yeah, so I said "Ok, well, if you don't have a warrant
then how did you get in?" & they said "Your roommate let us
in" so I'm, like, "I'm gonna have to have words with my roommate"
- particularly since I had a butterfly knife & some drug paraphernalia
out in plain view on my desk & I think my roommate knew this at the
time. Anyways, so, they're searchin' my apartment &, in the middle of
this, I get a page from my dad, so I said, "Can I go answer this page?
& they said "No, you can't. Stay there." I'm like "Alright,
this is illegal, I'm not under arrest & even if I was I'm entitled to
phone calls, so, you're gonna have to let me answer the phone & they
wouldn't let me answer the phone - you know, go call my dad.

RATical: Did they try to physically intervene between you &
the phone? Or what?

Dave: No, they just told me to sit down & I didn't want to
push the issue any further than that. Meanwhile, the one cop was talkin'
to me &, like, motor-mouthin', "You know, we're only just, we're
only here to, look for, like, bomb equipment - we're not here to look for
anything else - you've probably got a big baggie of marijuana sittin' in
your fridge" - I'm just like Shut-up, "Do you want something to
drink? - Just so I can prove to you that there's nothing in my fridge?"
It was kindof a frustrating moment, so, finally, they said, like, "Alright,
we didn't find anything except for this literature that - from sumthin'
called "Food Not Bombs" - This wouldn't have anything to do with
bomb making, would it?" [laughter] So, finally they left, & I called
my dad & he's, like, "Hi, so, 2 FBI agents & 3 city cops just
showed up at my house asking to search it" - so, this was how I found
out that they'd been to my dad's place too.

RATical: Did he allow them to search his place?

Dave: Yeah, & they questioned him for a while.. I talked to
him about it a little bit. They asked him pretty much the same questions
that they asked me - &, next day, there was an article in the Post-Gazette
which was - hhmmm, mildly accurate - that would be a generous way of puttin'
it

RATical: - & the title of the article is "Downtown drill
invites real-life drama" & it mentions that you, "a young
man with a gas-mask showed up on the scene uninvited" - now, 1st of
all, I don't really see any reason why you'd have to be invited - this was
on public property - so that's a, a bit misleading right there - &,
2ndly, they don't mention that you're not wearing the gas-mask. I think
it's somewhat implied that, perhaps, you were wearing the gas-mask rather
than just carrying one - which is, also, I think deliberately misleading
on the part of the Post-Gazette. They don't mention that the so-called "suspicious
wires", as they refer to them here, that "were discovered sticking
out from trash in the back seat" were your DiscMan wires - & there's
nothing suspicious about that except for somebody who's so stupid that they
can't recognize what such a thing might be which, presumably, somebody from
a bomb squad would be smart enough to recognize.

Dave: We hope.

RATical: So, if only so that they don't blow themselves up! Not
to mention the rest of us! Do you have any other comments that you'd like
to make about the way the article was written & how you think it affected
you at the time?

Dave: Just about everybody I know was, like for the next 2 weeks,
you know, sorta looked at me funny or said something to me about it.. -
kinda, I don't know, people's reactions to me changed alot after that. It
was sorta like, I don't know, I felt like I was almost ostracized for a
while.

RATical: Do you think that the article deliberately misrepresented
you in a way that's potentially damaging to your reputation with people
who don't understand how generally misrepresenting the media, the mass-media
usually is?

Dave: I think mostly they did it to try & get more shock value
out of it. I don't think it was as ridiculously misleading as some articles
I've seen but it certainly was.

RATical: Ok, do you have any closing comments?

Dave: I don't think so - anything else you wanna ask me?

RATical: One thing that's interesting about the article is that
they don't mention that the police & FBI went to your apartment &
searched it & to your father's home & searched that too. I think
that's a fairly major omission which probably the police & the FBI wanted
to see omitted & the obvious importance of the omission is that really
these were illegal searches, or, uh, unjustified searches that were based
on ridiculous things that most people of any intelligence would never consider
to be evidence. Otherwise,

Dave: - Actually, um, I have a bit to say about that. The detective
that was interrogating me for most of the time actually gave me his card
at the end & one of my friends decided to follow up on this a little
bit & called 'im up & asked 'im a buncha questions & he went
on the record as saying something to the effect of "He should've had
to pay for all the overtime hours & materials expended in searching
his car."

RATical: Yeah, as usual, WE are expected to pay for our own oppression
- that's what taxes are all about, in general. But, one other thing about
the article is that they only make an extremely small reference to the existence
of other protesters at the very end. In the very last sentence of the article
it says "Other than Romberger, the only other civilians with an interest
in the exercise were about 10 people with front-row seats inside Bruegger's
Bagels on Grant Street who were shouting that the United States should be
training for peace, not war."

Dave: - & I'd say that this was even fairly misrepresentative
of the protester's point that they were trying to make.

RATical: Yeah, as I recall, one of the points that the protesters
were trying to make was more specifically related to chemical warfare. I
don't know, I wasn't there, but it was my impression that one of the reasons
why this simulated chemical warfare attack was being staged in the 1st place
was partially in order to justify the chemical warfare research that's being
done at local universities here. Do you know anything about that?

Dave: I know the CMU chemistry department has been heavily involved
in the past with government contracts & I couldn't comment on what they're
doing currently but I do know that they're getting millions & millions
of dollars a year from the government - so they're probably doin' somethin'.

RATical: Yeah, so I think that probably part of the point of the
protests was not only to try to educate the people a little bit more about
the chemical warfare but to also point out that these public spectacles
that're supposedly for the defense of the public are really just as much,
if not more so, for the defense of the chemical warfare research that's
being done locally.